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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24667648">gold and frail sunlight (and the whole world holds its breath)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tavina/pseuds/Leaf-Groot'>Leaf-Groot (Tavina)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the world will hear us roar [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>But he takes suggestions, Gen, Steffon doesn't deserve the Lannister Twins, Tywin is still crazy, and angry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:27:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,675</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24667648</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tavina/pseuds/Leaf-Groot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Tywin's revolt, the whole world holds its breath waiting for the new king to make a decision.</p>
<p>And in the end, it comes, with the same sort of seething, angry grace as it did when he was a boy of ten, ready to rip off Walder Frey’s face for daring to broach the subject of marrying his sister to a second son. </p>
<p>Or, Tywin might’ve won his rebellion and put Aerys to the sword like he’d always promised, but there then arises the question of what to do afterwards. </p>
<p>And for that he turns to Jocelyn.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tywin Lannister &amp; Nara Shikako, Tywin Lannister/Rhaella Targaryen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the world will hear us roar [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604410</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>481</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>gold and frail sunlight (and the whole world holds its breath)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He is almost a king of ashes, a destroyed city with no backing and no supporters, the crownlands the most destroyed and wartorn of them all. He’d done his best to not raze it all.</p>
<p>It would make cleaning up after easier, especially with winter coming. A good lord knows when the destruction has become too much, and while it might be satisfying to see Aerys struggle with knowing just how <em>badly </em>he’s already lost, there would be no satisfaction in seeing farm fields burn and smallfolk killed.</p>
<p>It’d been a straight path into the heart of the kingdoms. He’d sent his refusal on forward to Aerys by raven, the news of him ripping up the king’s own decree in front of an audience spreading like wildfire, possibly even faster than ravens could fly.</p>
<p>Just like the wildfire that had nearly destroyed the city. Thankfully, he’d arrived to put Aerys to the sword <em>before </em>any caches could be lit, sneaking into the city after a hefty bribe to the men who armed the southern gate.</p>
<p>He’d written to Steffon, called him a friend, called him <em>brother, </em>wooed him with sweet words, asked after his pregnant wife, called upon both his and Joss’s memory to ask after the young lord of Storm’s End and all he held dear.</p>
<p>
  <em>Steffon, brother of my heart, I ask you with a heavy heart, to call your banners. There’s been insult dealt and madness stretched too far for me to bear it without throwing off this yoke. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I’ll be in your debt.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Lannisters pay their debts, Steffon.</em>
</p>
<p>It’d been a gamble. Steffon might’ve liked him more, but Aerys had been Steffon’s first cousin, and he was no more than a friend writing about honor and insult, making insinuations of madness asking for a mile tall order of banners called to <em>war</em>.</p>
<p>For regicide, because Tywin Lannister intended to kill a king for a promise he’d made when he was but a child.</p>
<p>
  <em>I’ll kill every man who dares try. </em>
</p>
<p>It’d been a gamble to write to Steffon.</p>
<p>It was a greater gamble still when Jocelyn had sat down and wrote to Loreza Martell of Dorne, but they had both seen the necessity of another kingdom joining their fight. The Targaryens had never taken Dorne, and now they asked for Dorne to rise as well.</p>
<p><em>Sister, </em>she’d written. <em>You know of Aerys’ temperament. You were there when Rhaella came to us with powder caked over the bruises on her face. </em></p>
<p>
  <em>Sister, you know it cannot last. Not when he’s styling himself thus, demanding a second wife.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Is it it any wonder that I wish to refuse him?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And he would have my whole house put to the sword for it.</em>
</p>
<p>But it’d been a gamble that paid.</p>
<p>And then he’d called the restless banners, most of them still tired from the War of the Ninepenny Kings, still settling into calling him their leige lord. His lord father’s death had been recent enough that there was still time needed to settle into acknowledgement of him not as heir, but as lord. But <em>he </em>had led them through the Stepstones, fought for their return home, <em>he </em>had led them in reclaiming the pride of the Lannisters, had routed armies far greater in size than his own, <em>he </em>had put the Westerlands in the most prosperous position it has been in for decades.</p>
<p>And they trusted him so after the weaker disposition of Lord Tytos Lannister.</p>
<p>And this time, Joss was not half a kingdom away, bound to the lady’s writing desk. Instead she rode her palfrey beside him in the middle guard, joining him in the war tent with the lords among his bannermen. He’d loathed to bring her, but he loathed to be parted from her even more.</p>
<p>It took only two skirmishes before they learned to respect Lady Jocelyn.</p>
<p>He’d marched east, on the Gold Road.</p>
<p>Steffon had marched north, on the King’s Road.</p>
<p>And from the south, Dorne had woken up, a sleeping scorpion shaking off the rest of too many days under the sands.</p>
<p>They’d fought only brief skirmishes until arriving in the Crownlands.</p>
<p>But in under a fortnight, Aerys had lost two friends, and more than a few of the other kingdoms, slow to answer his call for arms to stop the rebels.</p>
<p>The Riverlands and the Vale at least, held to the Faith of the Seven, and found the idea of a second queen at least insulting enough that they wouldn’t interfere.</p>
<p>Dorne, which had always been difficult to predict, had chosen them over the Targaryens.</p>
<p>The Reach was large but also full of cowards who had waited long to act.</p>
<p>The North was too far to be of much immediate assistance.</p>
<p>Three kingdoms of seven kingdoms turned their armies on the Crownlands.</p>
<p>And in two gambles built by asking after family, of promising aid and gold and a hand extended in friendship and debts paid, they'd won the war. It’d almost surprised him, how easily the Targaryens had toppled.</p>
<p>Was it any surprise then, that he’d won King’s Landing span of less than two years?</p>
<p>Just in time for the autumn to be fast creeping up on them all.</p>
<p>King’s Landing had stood a siege for seven months, Lannister men surrounding the walls, ensuring that no one got in, and no one got out. He might want Aerys put to the sword — Joss would be <em>safe </em>or so help him he would fight the Stranger himself — but that didn’t mean he wanted death and slaughter in the streets of the capital.</p>
<p>Death and slaughter might serve his purposes at times, but it did no good to make himself worse than the king who he had set out to remove.</p>
<p>And at the end of seven months, here he sits on the bottom step of the dias to the throne, Aerys dead in a plot that might’ve burned the whole city alive.</p>
<p>Aerys was dead, but what to do now, was in debate.</p>
<p>Not every Targaryen — there were only three — was dead. In fact, two of the three were decidedly not dead, ensconced as they were in the Maiden Vault, where the former queen of the Seven Kingdoms had taken her child and locked herself.</p>
<p>Joss would never forgive him if he had them put to death, no matter how simple that might be.</p>
<p>So very simple.</p>
<p>But he had not waged a war and killed a king so that his sister could decide she didn’t like him anymore.</p>
<p>The question of Rhaella and Rhaegar would have to be considered more <em>delicately </em>then.</p>
<p>As it is, in this moment, he sits on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the Iron Throne, his arms on his knees, with Joss sitting beside him, looking out of place with her wine red gown and the golden stitching of flowers across the collar, and looks across at Steffon, who’d fallen to his knees.</p>
<p>“Are you sure you don’t want to climb up there?” It’s not a full question of course, because Steffon will never sit on this throne, not by the way he’s already kneeling. “You’ve got the better blood claim.”</p>
<p>The blood of Targaryens does not run in his own veins, thank the gods. There’s enough in being a Lannister without the madness that ran so rampant that incestuous marriage was considered normal, that two wives was considered <em>reasonable and merciful</em>.</p>
<p>It might be enough to become turnt in the head. Aerys couldn’t have his sister as a mistress so he’d sung a different tune, and thought that Tywin Lannister would be <em>thankful </em>to be good brother to the king.</p>
<p>Madness.</p>
<p>The lion bows and scrapes and begs for scraps from no one.</p>
<p>“You’d make the better king.” Steffon doesn’t rise, just clasps a hand over his chest. “Long live the king!”</p>
<p>Tywin Lannister, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, King of the Seven Kingdoms Protector of the Realm.</p>
<p>It has a strange ring to it.</p>
<hr/>
<p>“What are you planning to do about Rhaegar and Rhaella?” Jocelyn asks him when Steffon has finally left, when the dust settles and the other affairs are more or less pushed away.</p>
<p>They are alone again, just the two of them.</p>
<p>She doesn’t know what he plans, only knows that he likely has nothing good in store for the former queen who is still locked in the Maiden Vault, or the boy of five up there with her.</p>
<p>She’d trust him with her life, but the Rains of Castamere, even now playing all across the Westerlands had taught her not to trust him with anyone else’s. Likely there’d be another slew of songs after this. What sorts of songs they would sing of the new king draped in red and gold with blood as dark and hair as fair as the colors of his house, well, that would be for this conversation and conversations after it to decide.</p>
<p>And by all she loved and knew best — Tywin himself chief among them — she would see to it that they sang triumphant, joyful songs of how the new king is so much better than the old.</p>
<p>“I haven’t planned anything,” he says, and she’ll trust him just as far as she can throw him. Which, in this life, wasn’t very far at all. The lack of chakra would make it difficult to throw anyone with any amount of force and distance. “Don’t look at me like that, Joss,” he says after a beat. “You think I didn’t learn after the Reynes and the Tarbecks?”</p>
<p>So maybe he has learned, but knowing Tywin, it’s how to be slyer about hiding his misdeeds.</p>
<p>“I think you’re getting better at not telling me about what you’ve done.”</p>
<p>He scowls, displeasure carving itself deep into his features. “Do you really think so lowly of me, Joss?”</p>
<p>She sighs, and goes to sit beside him once more. “It’s not thinking lowly of you.” Somehow, this war had ended, not with their deaths, as she had feared and dreaded, but with her volatile twin on the throne.</p>
<p>Even if he hadn’t bothered to sit in it yet, instead preoccupying himself with ordering men to start tearing down all the Targaryen banners about the keep and unfurling victorious Lannister ones instead, it’s <em>his </em>throne, and both Dorne and Steffon knew it.</p>
<p>“I <em>know you</em>, Ty.” She reaches out and squeezes his hand. “I know you like to take the straight path. I don’t blame you for it. It just—” she sighs “sometimes, it works better another way.”</p>
<p>Even if it was bloodshed. Even if it was violence. Even if it was ruin.</p>
<p>Even then.</p>
<p>The straight path won out for them.</p>
<p>Tywin Lannister does not run, and neither does Jocelyn Lannister. The two of them are a right pair — a lady on her third try at life in a third world, this one more bloody than either of her last, and a lord who was seemingly born angry.</p>
<p>Lions do not cower, even before dragonfire.</p>
<p>“You could go up and talk to her.” He offers.</p>
<p>She <em>could</em>, she <em>could </em>and perhaps she had to.</p>
<p>Before Rhaella signs the treaty forfeiting the crown, her brother technically is no king at all. And after coming so far, she doesn’t choose to believe in failure.</p>
<p>But how much would Rhaella be willing to listen when this whole war had started because Aerys had wanted a second wife, and that second wife had been <em>her? </em>Rhaella could overlook so many of her brother’s avarices for the sake of keeping peace, but she could not look past her brother’s intentions for her <em>friends. </em></p>
<p>And Aerys certainly had designs for her.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if she’d surrender.” There are things she <em>could </em>say. But would they work?</p>
<p>“Ask her to think carefully on that.” Ty tells her. “If she doesn’t surrender, there’s not much we can for her, is there?”</p>
<p>She breathes in. She breathes out.</p>
<p>She wants to refute this, but knows that she cannot.</p>
<p>This world is cruel and hard, in different ways than her last one. This world is cruel and hard, and near everyone who lived in this world knows it.</p>
<p>So up she goes, to treat with the last of the dragon queens.</p>
<hr/>
<p>It is not Joss who comes to talk to him about the somewhat striking document he’d drafted last night. There are, after all, few ways to settle the alliances of a dynasty.</p>
<p>Death is one; marriage is another.</p>
<p>Since Joss would never speak to him again if he chose death, the only option left was marriage. And if it must be so, then it will be so, if only because the other alternatives are nothing but false paths.He’d sent a copy of it to her when he’d completed it, ostensibly to ask her for advice, but perhaps it is nothing more than approval he wanted, for he cared for her approval more than anything else.</p>
<p>But it is not Joss who comes to ask him about the contract.</p>
<p>It is Genna.</p>
<p>“Big Brother?” His younger sister had arrived in King’s Landing just this morning, after they had ascertained the safety of the roads, the city, and the keep. While he, Joss, and Kevan could more or less take care of themselves, Genna had never taken to the sword, and he would trust the safety of guards and cleared roads more than he would trust his younger sister to stab a man to defend herself.</p>
<p>“What is it?” He’d seen her this morning, but there’d been much more to think about, so he’d left her to the company of Kevan and Gerion, only Tygett at home to hold the Rock. His fifth brother would handle anyone who thought that they could attack when the lord lion’s back was turned.</p>
<p>Tyg might be young, but both he and Joss had taught their littlest brother well. There is war on the field and war in the great hall and Tyg can fight both.</p>
<p>“Do you really intend to marry the Targaryen queen?” Genna comes into the room, her hands clasped before her, sleeves of pastel pink fluttering in her wake.</p>
<p>“I intend to if she accepts.” After all, Rhaella may yet surprise him and choose some other path. It would not be wise of her, but then, Targaryens are rarely, if ever, <em>wise. </em></p>
<p>One only had to look to Aerys to see that.</p>
<p>"You've given up so much already, Big Brother." Genna comes to stand beside him, her hands brushing the back of his chair. She’s grown less shy with him, his little sister has, and some part of him is immensely glad of it.</p>
<p>Sending him and Joss away so long ago was a decision his lord father made that was a great disservice to their family, splintering them as it had until none of his younger siblings really trusted or knew either him or Joss.</p>
<p>The connections had taken time to rebuild when they should have been like second nature. They’re lions. Lions hunt in prides.</p>
<p>"The king cannot marry his cousin." He’d thought, once, to marry Joanna. There was no great attachment between them, he’d grown up here in King’s Landing and she in Lannisport, but Uncle Jason had died in the Stepstones, and he’d given his word that his children would be well provided for. <em>With my word as Lord of the Rock, they will want for nothing. Rest well with the Stranger, Uncle, your family will want for nothing. </em></p>
<p>At the time, it meant that Joanna would be Lady of the Rock. But now things have shifted once again, and the king cannot marry his cousin.</p>
<p>He waged war, yes, but he intended to have peace too. And Joss has said clearly. <em>Peace can not be born from the blood of innocents, Ty, that’s no real peace at all. How long before a child’s body is taken up as a standard to unjust rule?</em></p>
<p>“Other kings have married their cousins before.” Genna’s voice is gentle, cautious, and too late he remembers that <em>Genna </em>had grown up with Joanna at the Rock, Lannisport being only a mile away. Of course, she’d be invested, she knew Joanna more than her own sister.</p>
<p>But it is not to be this way.</p>
<p>Yes, other <em>Targaryen</em> kings have married their cousins before. <em>And their sisters and nieces and aunts and— </em></p>
<p>"Not if I am king."</p>
<p>And strangely, that means he <em>has </em>made up his mind regarding the affairs of peace and marriage.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Her brother gets married on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor, dressed in red velvet and cloth of gold, a plain circlet cast from gold upon his head.</p>
<p>She and Rhaegar stand in the front of the guests with her other siblings, flanked by Lannister guardsmen, clapping and cheering when they are supposed to.</p>
<p>Rhaegar, though he is only five, is far more astute than his age and parentage gave him credit for, and his questions had apparently so unnerved Gerry that she stepped in and now the last of the dragon princes was staying with her even as his mother ended up marrying her brother.</p>
<p>Rhaegar had asked her some terrible questions as well. <em>If my lord father is dead, and my lady mother is to be married to the new king does that mean that I am to die? </em></p>
<p>She’d told him no, he wasn’t going to die, to which he had then asked, <em>if I am not going to die, am I going to be made a bastard then? </em></p>
<p>For that, she does not yet have clear answers and told him so, as is only correct and proper. Queen Rhaella marries her brother, and thus will come to no harm, but as for her eldest son...Ty had said nothing of what was to come for Rhaegar, and she believes it is up to her to decide that course of fate.</p>
<p>The fate of the mother was Ty’s decision. The fate of the son will be her decision, and she hopes to all the gods listening that it will not be one she regrets making.</p>
<p>He is terribly precocious and far more without a filter than Tywin was at his age.</p>
<p>She had sat down with him and spoken quietly. <em>Children are not to be punished by the sins of their fathers, Rhaegar. </em></p>
<p>Watching the marriage now, she wonders if she really had the right to say that. It is a lighter punishment than being dead, that’s true, but the way things are now, she is to stand in for Rhaella, to raise her eldest son even though neither of them had done anything to deserve the separation.</p>
<p>It has been a long time since she has been the primary caretaker for a child. In her last life, there wasn’t a need to. She’d had parents to balance the care of a younger sibling. In this one, she has missed out on the childhood days of almost all of her younger siblings.</p>
<p>And now even Gerry is older.</p>
<p>Well, it is a third try at life now, and in this one she steps forward, a boy of five holding her hand as all cheer for the new king and queen.</p>
<p><em>Silver and gold, </em>the whispers say. <em>The lion king and the dragon queen. </em></p>
<hr/>
<p>The morning after his wedding night, Ty comes to her solar and pours himself a cup of wine even though he doesn’t drink often and certainly not in large gulps as though he is about to lose his temper.</p>
<p>“Is there something the matter?” Rhaegar slept in the nursery still, down the hall from where she has taken up residence, so the Lord Lion may be as loud as he likes.</p>
<p>She knows his seething fury, knows his look of rage, and knows further still that no matter how loud he roared or angry he became that Ty would never hurt her. No anger management classes could possibly save him from the way he seemed birthed of raw fury alone with hardly a mother or a father to claim his existence, but she was a lioness too, with teeth and claws and a roar just as loud.</p>
<p>“He <em>marked </em>her.” The three words sit between them in the silence. “She was <em>property </em>to him.”</p>
<p>And even if the words themselves are not spoken loudly, the silence between them roars with the fury of a thousand storms.</p>
<p>She’d always known that Aerys was no good king, no good man, no good husband for the way that he acted in public, for the way that Rhaella wore heavy makeup to cover up her bruises, long sleeves even when the heat in the summer rose to unbearable intensity.</p>
<p>But it has been months now, since Aerys died.</p>
<p>It is not <em>bruises </em>that Aerys left on his sister then. It is <em>scars </em>both physical and mental and the thought stirs the rage in her own heart as well.</p>
<p>“He is dead,” she says, as much to calm the rage in herself as she does to calm his rage. “And gone, and from beyond the grave he can no longer hurt her.”</p>
<p>But it should not have taken the grave to make him stop.</p>
<p>“If I had known I would’ve killed him more painfully than chopping of his head.” Ty strangles the air for a few moments before tossing back another cup of wine like it is nothing. “If I could bring back the dead I would kill him again for good measure.”</p>
<p>And this is how she knows, that perhaps the future is clearer than she thought it was when Ty first announced, over breakfast, that he was going to marry Aerys’ queen instead of Cousin Joanna.</p>
<p>It would be alright.</p>
<p>She comes to set a hand on his shoulder, pulling the wine goblet away from him. “The past is past, there is only the future to look to.”</p>
<p>“Aye.” He agrees. “Aye, there is that.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Oh boy, part four of this series and I *think* there's another four parts to go. But then I'll be done. Aha. Possibly. </p>
<p>Anyhow, I hope this was a fun read!</p>
<p>~Tav (Leaf)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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